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Only those impressed by a few flashy touches and/or Bayern's transfer policy, ever thought anything of this smoke and mirrors player. His selection as young player of the last Euros was ridiculous; watch the all touches videos.

Some people assessed his preseason display against us as outstanding. That was ridiculous as well; watch that video too.

I can't believe professional football people, with access to hundreds of hours of video, and hundreds of pages of scouting reports, could have been taken in to the same degree. In other words, I hope rumours of our interest in this player was all paper talk. I hope too that we've heard the last of the, "Why didn't we sign Sanches?", talk.

Completely disagree, just looks like a player completely shot of confidence. He had a great season at Benfica before he went to Bayern - completely the wrong move. The talent is there but he’s completely lost his way. He needs to maybe find himself a good club in Spain or Germany where he needs a good coach that can bring out his talent.

Sanches won the Golden Boy award last year - an award given to the best U21 player in Europe (not the Euros) so plenty of professional football people rate his talent.

He should’ve stayed in Portugal.

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Completely disagree, just looks like a player completely shot of confidence. He had a great season at Benfica before he went to Bayern - completely the wrong move. The talent is there but he’s completely lost his way. He needs to maybe find himself a good club in Spain or Germany where he needs a good coach that can bring out his talent.

Sanches won the Golden Boy award last year - an award given to the best U21 player in Europe (not the Euros) so plenty of professional football people rate his talent.

He should’ve stayed in Portugal.

Thanks Skipper.

Its not often that I find my point of view so different to yours.

I wonder if you share my take that those voting for awards are not always particularly diligent in the way they approach the task. There would be an awful lot of football to watch in order to fully validate the vote they cast. Whether or not anyone actually watches all that football is doubtful but it can’t be doubted that these ‘voted’ awards are very susceptible to hype, profile and ‘flavour of the monthism.

I can’t, and won’t, attempt to dismiss Sanches’s Golden Boy award because I didn’t do the due diligence either. I did watch the Euros however and posted at the time to offer the opinion that his displays there were being overrated. Someone has to win Young Player of The Tournament but the fact it was Sanches reflected his being a part of the Portugal squad, and having been expensively signed by Bayern earlier that summer, as much as it did his actual displays.

Sometimes a player underperforms because he’s at the wrong club, at the wrong time and sometimes it’s because he’s not up to it. If this player is as good as he was initially assessed to be, then I’ve failed to spot it. Let’s hope for the young man’s sake that I am in error.

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Disagree Pizy. I don't think we need an attacking player. Imo the 3-5-2 should be our starting formation.

Better wingbacks and more quality on the ball in central midfield is a must for me. (that + some squad depth)

We're extremely poor in the wide areas due to our wingbacks inabillity to take on their direct opponent and lack of a final ball.

With the amount of space our wingbacks have, and constant 1 on 1's they get, they should be causing a lot of dangerous attacks, but they all cant cross a ball (Azpi is our best crosser ) Alonso gets the most 1 on 1 situations in our team but cant beat a man, and zapacossta cant make right decisions when in dangerous areas. Look at the amount of space they had against swansea but couldnt capitalize. We just have to improve on them if we want to be dominant world class team with 3-5-2.

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Man.. too many average players in this team. It's not gonna cut it if we want to be at the very top.
Just imagine if Hazard leaves this summer.. then we're only left with Kante, and maybe Cesc, who I still value (not talking about defenders).

We have to do some serious upgrading in the summer because Willian and Pedro aint gonna cut it.. same goes for Zappacosta/Moses and probably Alonso aswell.

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Thought Willian was brilliant before he was substituted yesterday. Ran the show and hope he keeps his place on Saturday.

Brillant? Yes, but if that is the best he can do: poorly calibrated passed, or randomly throwing the ball into the melee after a short acceleration.he did not play badly, only he just is not good enough.

I wonder if you share my take that those voting for awards are not always particularly diligent in the way they approach the task. There would be an awful lot of football to watch in order to fully validate the vote they cast. Whether or not anyone actually watches all that football is doubtful but it can’t be doubted that these ‘voted’ awards are very susceptible to hype, profile and ‘flavour of the monthism.

I can’t, and won’t, attempt to dismiss Sanches’s Golden Boy award because I didn’t do the due diligence either. I did watch the Euros however and posted at the time to offer the opinion that his displays there were being overrated. Someone has to win Young Player of The Tournament but the fact it was Sanches reflected his being a part of the Portugal squad, and having been expensively signed by Bayern earlier that summer, as much as it did his actual displays.

Sometimes a player underperforms because he’s at the wrong club, at the wrong time and sometimes it’s because he’s not up to it. If this player is as good as he was initially assessed to be, then I’ve failed to spot it. Let’s hope for the young man’s sake that I am in error.

I do agree that certain awards are a bit of a joke due to voting processes but the Golden Boy awards aren’t too bad. If you look at how the Golden Boy is picked and who picks it, and if we look at the last few winners - Mbappé, Sanches, Martial, Sterling, Pogba, Isco, Götze - they have a pretty good track record when it comes down to it so I do appreciate it with a lot more credence.

I do agree on your assessment on him being YPOT in the Euros was more to do with him being part of the winning team, but he did play with a maturity way beyond his age. I must also say it probably had some influence in nudging him ahead of Rashford for the award, but I don’t think it was a huge factor.

Renato shot off too early to Munich. Sort of same problem someone like Hojbjerg had. He didn’t get much game time whatsoever, and after all the hype and awards the spot light is on you, mistakes are highlighted even more and that can easily knock an 18 year old’s confidence. He should’ve stayed in Portugal, less spot light, way more time to refine his game etc.

He already has some very interesting talents - his press resistance is great for example, and he has great technique and great stamina - he’s a tailor made modern B2B midfielder. At Swansea however the quality of his team mates aren’t too great. Even Tammy is having the same problem imo.

He was genuinely misplacing the easiest passes on Wednesday, felt sorry for him. Clement did well to take him off to protect him. People forget the guy just turned 20 2/3 months ago.